EVENTS

Here I Stand; I Can Do No Other

Some of us come out to the desert to escape the Panopticon that life in the city already is, increasingly. In Los Angeles, Google Glass might be just one more increment of invasion in a landscape already thoroughly colonized by surveillance cameras, red light cameras, random private webcams, smart phone videographers and other such prying eyes. But there are places out here that don’t even have 4G yet. In fact — and you might want to sit down here and swallow that mouthful of coffee — there are some places out here where even the 3G coverage is spotty. We are in the back of beyond here in much of Eastern California.

And we like it that way, mostly.

So by all means, come on out and visit the desert. Bring your recording equipment, whether it’s a shoulder-mounted Steadicam or this latest bit of geek lust from Google sitting on your face. Document your hike. Record that coyote begging for sandwiches. Take video of that gorgeous desert bloom backlit by sunrise. The desert needs all the documentation it can get.

But if you’re talking to me, take that Google Glass off and put it away. If I’m speaking in public — which I do from time to time, offering lectures and poetry readings and such — and see you’re in my audience wearing Google Glass and you haven’t cleared it with me first, I will stop what I’m doing and ask you to put it away or leave. If you’re at an adjacent cafe table facing me and recording in my direction, I will write something derogatory in Sharpie on a sheet of paper and hold it up. I may escalate from there. And I’m not alone.

Also note: that post mentions a particular instance of a person photographing others in public, in the context of potential soliological impacts of Google Glass. Discussion of whether that particular person was right to do what she did with those photos is off-topic for this post. Comments that raise that issue will be deleted with prejudice. You’ve got two whole other multi-thousand-comment threads for that.

Comments

Adrian Chen at Gawker — not usually a source of anti-tech sentiment — offers up this memorable lead paragraph in his uncompromising and potentially NSFW take on the device:

Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has developed a brilliantly concise definition of an asshole: “A person who demands that all social interaction happen on their terms.” He was inspired by the assholes who talk in Amtrak’s quiet car, but this reasoning also perfectly explains why those who use Google’s new wearable computer are assholes, by definition.

Are other people allowed to recognize you, Chris? Are they allowed to remember having seen you?

I don’t see the difference, in principle, and in fact, the day is not far off when those Google glasses will be built-in. They will feed directly into prosthetic memory, which will never ever forget you.

I really, really wanted something like the Google Glass back when my back was good enough to row. Would have made one hell of a rear-view mirror, and buoys are bad for fiberglass. I realize that the light that betrays when it is recording will be the first thing to get hacked, and if somebody makes a wearable viewer without a camera, someone else will make one with a camera that looks just like it. So – how can somebody wear such a thing without being an asshole? Assume for the purposes of this question that wearing something that makes people justifiably afraid that their privacy is being violated falls under the definition of assholery.

I don’t see the difference, in principle, and in fact, the day is not far off when those Google glasses will be built-in. They will feed directly into prosthetic memory, which will never ever forget you.

Well, I for one would read that book. Wait, have I already? I do like the term prosthetic memory, I don’t like that it will never forget me.

Eagle Rock? Hope you got a chance to imbibe with some fine ERB Revolution, Manifesto or Populist. Really, almost all their beers are great.

“A person who demands that all social interaction happen on their terms.” This is why I have always hated the people I carpool with who decide to make speaker-phone calls while we drive and I’m stuck in the passenger seat listening on. It’s like being a prisoner.

Are other people allowed to recognize you, Chris? Are they allowed to remember having seen you?

But there is a difference, even a legal one (at least in many countries): While you are allowed to e.g. remember what someone has said to you, you are usually not allowed to record that without consent from the person you’re recording, or at least you’re not allowed to publish it. Similar things are sometimes true for pictures or videos, e.g. if someone demands defamatory pictures of themselves being taken down from an online platform (although one could argue how effective such measures usually are).

Thus, there being a difference between recording things with your brain and recording things with technical appliances is pretty normal.

An aside note once again with people who have difficulty getting reliable 3G/4G internet coverage: I live in a well wooded gully and find that hanging the receiver off a large metallic object in the room helps massively with signal strength. A 7 foot square metal window frame set in wood does me at home. At friends places I’ve used napkin holders, sculptures, windows etc. An indoor antenna creatively made of fencing wire would be an asset to every poor suffering mobile internet user!
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As for Googlegoggles, fuck that. I hope they get the (lack of) repect they deserve. I can barely deal with customers that consult me face to face and answer every phone call that comes their way instead of shutting it down. Utterly rude.

An aside note once again with people who have difficulty getting reliable 3G/4G internet coverage: I live in a well wooded gully and find that hanging the receiver off a large metallic object in the room helps massively with signal strength.

Thanks for that, but right now the only way I could do that would leave the cord vulnerable to the rats, and they have a marked taste for those specific type of cords.

It looks like Google Glass embodies the complete Chinese curse.May you live in interesting times, check.May you get everything you want, check.May you come to the attention of those in power, oh hell yes check.

Excuse me, Cupcake, but where did Chris do that? He stated that they would not be welcome at an event where he was speaking. A speaker gets to call the shots in that case. Many speakers don’t allow cell phone usage during an engagement. Lots of places don’t allow them. Your hyperbolic non-criticism isn’t going to get you anywhere.

I’ll admit I haven’t thought enough about the implications of the recording/photographing capabilities. I find those abilities superfluous. What I do find attractive is the GPS functionality and the rumored translation ability. I find the concept cool in general, as well. On the other hand, I already wear horrifically expensive glasses, so the likelihood of my getting to use a device like google glass is virtually nil for the foreseeable future.

“Bitch” was indeed inappropriate and unthinking use of a misogynist term.

The rest stands.

We have a technophobic fossil who proudly boasts about living in a place where 3G is spotty. We have people offering, to general approval, a definition of the term “asshole” that reads: “A person who demands that all social interaction happen on their terms.”

And we have said fossil demanding that all social interaction happen on his terms, namely sans Google Glass.

Completely off topic, but those phrases do not appear to actually be of Chinese origin. The only use anyone has been able to find has been by Brits and Americans, and only dating back to the late 1930s. It appears to have been popularized by Robert F. Kennedy in 1966, and the second and third parts seem to play on American prejudices, so I’d bet those parts were added later. It is possible it originated as a completely mangled translation of a Chinese proverb, and one often mentioned is one about how “it’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than a man in a time of chaos”, which isn’t all that close.

You’re being willfully dishonest. There is a difference between technophobia and blind adoration of technology for its own sake without regard to its effect on interactions in different settings. That’s unreasonable and kooky.

You want some serious reading by a genuinely thoughtful person on the topic of easily available cameras, try reading *The Transparent Society* by David Brin, it’s a bit dated since he wrote it in 1999, but his analysis is a lot better than our resident fossil’s.

I teeheed at the idea of a blogger being called a technophobe. But really, we should just be okay with all technology all the time and never question the implications of its use? I don’t think that would really be the best way to roll.

I let sotonohito and his stupidity and his ageism stay one comment longer than I wanted to because the Brin recommendation was a good one.

But ignoring the part where I said that I wanted to play with Google Glass, and the part where I looked forward to seeing natural history overlay apps being developed, and the part where I said some aspects of the tech were nifty, and the part where I said “by all means, come out and document the desert with your favorite toy whatever it is?”

O.o I just cannot sympathize with this argument. The Google Glasses are just a glorified smartphone HUD. The issues of privacy with respect to tech improvements is interesting but I guess I don’t suffer from whatever pisses him off about it. There is nothing really new here or worth special consideration from any device in the past decade other than ubiquity of smartphones (it used to be portable camcorders/cameras were their own single devices back in yonder days so they may not have been as prevalent). Doesn’t seem to bother me and I don’t see why it bothers him.

phhht, you can’t imagine how sorry I am to have disappointed you. Perhaps you’d be happier discussing your very important reified metaphors about how a zeitgeist is exactly like a database somewhere else.

since the things have some cool potential and even possible useful social benefits maybe there’s some changes that could make them less privacy threatening? Making the recording indicator more obvious (possibly adding it playing mild but noticeable white noise when recording? a physical safty that has to be visibly lowered? Brighter led light? Slow flashing led that changes colors?) To make it clear when someone is or isn’t in recording mode.

since the things have some cool potential and even possible useful social benefits maybe there’s some changes that could make them less privacy threatening? Making the recording indicator more obvious (possibly adding it playing mild but noticeable white noise when recording? a physical safty that has to be visibly lowered? Brighter led light? Slow flashing led that changes colors?) To make it clear when someone is or isn’t in recording mode.

since the things have some cool potential and even possible useful social benefits maybe there’s some changes that could make them less privacy threatening? Making the recording indicator more obvious (possibly adding it playing mild but noticeable white noise when recording? a physical safty that has to be visibly lowered? Brighter led light? Slow flashing led that changes colors?) To make it clear when someone is or isn’t in recording mode.

Or an off shutter like with webcams

The noise wouldn’t be a good idea if it interferes with the audio recording. That and then it might be a nuisance to others or the user. The same may go for LED lights; you want it to be at a brightness that indicates function for yourself and those being recorded but it can’t be too bright that it is an annoyance however I like the idea of a “glow” that’s not interfering with recording for others or the device but still indicative of function: it might look “appealing” and still be more indicative than a small led light. Think “Mood ring color change” that oscillates slowly. Additional physical switches would probably run against the minimalist design or interfere with ergonomics.

Now of course you may not care about the user or manufacturer here on this but I have a feeling that (A) improvements can be made that everyone can enjoy and (B) the concerns individuals have with regard to privacy has a wide range of concerns and we probably shouldn’t hang much on this one guy’s opinion. These same “panopticon of cameras” issues have existed for awhile; hell I pretty much have grown up with them so I don’t get anxious about it because I’ve adapted my behavior well with it. That and I don’t have a large distrust issue which I’m sure will be shattered if I ever become a source of interest.

Google Glass would be cool to play with, but I can’t imagine seriously wearing it every day. It would be useful for a few specific purposes, like not having to look down to see GPS directions while driving. The ability to always record everything you see is a little creepy, though obviously glasses mounted hidden cameras have been around for a long time. I wonder if this is a just gimmick or where the technology is headed, first it was a camera in every pocket, now a camera on every head?

I wonder if in the future, it will be normal for people to record every minute they’re out in public, perhaps for legal purposes like with the Russian dashcams.

From a legal standpoint, is there anything that prevents people from wearing hidden cameras and microphones in public? Should there be?

Once these are in prescription glasses, you will be asking people to remove the device that allows them to see properly. It won’t be too long until you can’t tell if a pair of designer frames has Glass built in or not. I think you are going to have to learn to deal with the idea rather than reject anyone using it.

For now you should be happy that Google Glass will have a “recording” LED built-in. That’s more than can be said of most cell phone cameras. That, of course, will only help in the short run until a larger market for different models comes along.

Personally I hated cell phones. I only broke down and bought a pair when my dad fell and broke his ribs in his basement and couldn’t get up to call anyone for hours. Other people love them, and I can understand why. I don’t like the feeling of always being connected and accessible. I grew up in a different world, but I still understand the appeal for others.

Constantly recording/streaming video isn’t something that appeals to me, but I understand why it appeals to others. I can live with them recording my public interactions with them.

I’m more concerned with near instant facial (or other types of) recognition tied to extensive databases and public records.

The recording aspect really is a kind of Pandora’s Box, though. You can try to fight it, but eventually you will just need to figure out how to deal with it, or just avoid most human contact.

Who knows. Maybe this will herald a bright new day when, finally, picking your nose on occasion isn’t considered a dreadful social sin.

From what I know street shots are typically ok as long as the person is not the focus of the shot. Focusing in on one person is shakier ground.

I don’t know from video, but when it comes to photography, it’s dependent on commercial use. If you plan to use a shot to make money, you are supposed to get a release. Crowd shots are generally an exception to that rule, but again, it depends on whether it’s a public or private venue, if it’s a commercial event, and so forth. Of course, none of that stops an unscrupulous person, however, if someone sees their image in an ad or gallery or for sale, and a release was not obtained, they have grounds to sue.

I don’t think the noise, however mild is really a good idea—what happens when there are several such devices in operation in close proximity? I can feel my teeth grinding in anticipation.
I do like the slowly-oscillating “mood ring” effect, though.

And I definitely don’t care for the (in my view, inevitable) abuse of any such extensive database. Do sellers of merchandise need an even more accurate idea of my purchasing habits? And while I don’t get up to much, and don’t have a lot worth stealing, inviting more people to scope out my usual activities and suchlike isn’t an appealing idea, either. It’s possible that I misunderstand the exact capacities for abuse of these devices, but I’ll bet there’ll soon be apps for that.

Then again, the ubiquity of cell phone cameras has made it more likely that, for instance, abusers of authority will be caught “red handed”, and that an official “spin” on a less-than-savory action will have evidence that does not support the official view, available and out of officialdom’s power to forstall.

Tech is a tricksy beast—a variable number of downsides for every upside.
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Just a note. Photo journalism (and video journalism) do not require a model release if the imagery was taken in the public sphere. Also if you take photos of people in public and then put them up in an art gallery to sell them that’s legal (in the USA).

For every Adria Richards out there documenting sexist behavior in the workplace, how many creeps will there be documenting teenaged girls in yoga pants?

Yeah, this is pretty much the crux of it for me. In a kyriarchal world, expensive tech is going to do much more reenforcing social domination than it is breaking down. I would not be surprised if “safe-guards” just so happen to appear exactly when Glass and similar become accessible to the less privileged.

It is better if safe-guards appear now, but it is important that those safeguards are designed with accessibility in mind. (Ensuring that whatever the I am recording indicator is, it is broadly accessible to people with disabilities-and the CAB too!-, but also that the warnings don’t render the public space more hostile to people with disabilities). I am not sure what that would look like exactly.

Google already blurs faces of people in Streetview. And cameras are pretty good at identifying things that look like human faces. So how about we make Google Glass automatically blur or pixelate, in real time, the faces of people who don’t consent to being recorded?

Consent can be indicated by wearing a QR code or broadcasting a special signal of your own. Blurring would be the default for anyone who doesn’t opt in.

And maybe Google Glass can broadcast an ID so that people know who is recording them, and can check the recording if it is posted online.

phhht, you can’t imagine how sorry I am to have disappointed you. Perhaps you’d be happier discussing your very important reified metaphors about how a zeitgeist is exactly like a database somewhere else.

Gee, Chris, thanks for the suggestion! I’d never have thought of that all by myself, isolated here in my self-important german-word solipsistic hallucination, too dumb to hope to learn from others! I’ll do exactly what you say.
Bye now. And good luck with your bullying.

I’ve been writing a short SF story set a few decades in the future. In putting it together and imagining where tech will go, I came up with a contact lens that can record, compute and communicate, which turned out to make a convenient plot device. I’m surprised by how similar, if not in form then definitely function, the Glass is. Which made me realise that the Glass in lens form may not be so far off as I had imagined, and this controversy has raised lot of social issues that I had not previously considered. But worse in a way, because you can’t tell who is using one.

Though I also invented a pepper spray that scrambles them, so perhaps it balances out.

I do have to agree that the bullying is a bit out of hand Chris. The posters in general aren’t entirely innocent but I would expect the person who posted the blog to hold him or herself up to a higher standard.

I don’t really see how Google Glass is so terrible, this reaction seems very technophobic to me. The person with glasses who is looking in your direction could potentially be recording you? I don’t really get what the problem is, but that’s just me.

Chris, you’ve made 13 replies as of #102, and almost half of them is to attack another poster. As the blogger of this post and person with moderation powers, by attacking the posters you are in fact bullying them into shutting up. You are not being constructive.

Craja, the two people I’ve confronted have led with personal attacks in obvious bad faith. That kind of shit poisons the well for other commenters. You will note that several people here have disagreed with me without confrontation. I’ve shut only one person up, and that was after explicitly giving him a chance to correct his behavior and disagree constructively.

“Almost half” of 13 is what, 6? In a thread with over a hundred comments, aimed mainly at one abusive commenter.It’s called moderation. You don’t like the way I moderate threads? You are welcome to exercise your free speech rights elsewhere.

I do feel that your “moderation” against Phhht was a bit much, but I guess you are right, I may be overreacting a bit. I am a bit offput by your moderation style as I don’t think you have any excuse to insult another poster, for any reason. You sink to their level. There is no point for a hostile attitude.

I do feel that your “moderation” against Phhht was a bit much, but I guess you are right, I may be overreacting a bit. I am a bit offput by your moderation style as I don’t think you have any excuse to insult another poster, for any reason. You sink to their level. There is no point for a hostile attitude.

I will consider your viewpoint about the insults, Craja, because that’s always good advice to consider.

But in return, I ask you keep in mind that the bloggers and regular posters here are human beings who have been subject to an overwhelming barrage of vituperation, deliberate insult, abuse, stalking, and coordinated harassment. When I take the time to write something which a commenter dismisses with personal insults showing he obviously hasn’t read the piece, and persists in that tack despite (admittedly terse and increasingly impatient) correction, there comes a point at which an insult might actually be the most effective way to get that person to clam up so others can be heard.

I gave sothingorother more chances to actually have a conversation than was wise. Perhaps you’re right in the sense that that made me more prone to insult him. It’s possible I should have just nuked him right off. I was caught between my desire to give people chances to act as adults and my increasing impatience with bad faith.

Early in the cellphone era, before Bluetooth, even before the integration of cameras into cellphones, someone devised the correct term for people who just have to have their cellphone with them at all times, who never turn it off, who answer every call no matter what they’re doing or who they’re talking to:

I do feel that your “moderation” against Phhht was a bit much, but I guess you are right, I may be overreacting a bit. I am a bit offput by your moderation style as I don’t think you have any excuse to insult another poster, for any reason. You sink to their level. There is no point for a hostile attitude.

Orly? I thought every comment phht made was an exercise in teen angst, and nothing would have been lost by not allowing phht to comment at all. Perhaps you are mistaken, and you are actually deeply offended by the bunnification of sonohowhatever xis nym was?

I also think Chris’s moderating style is pretty damn awesome, and the complete opposite of hostile.

Do you have a comment to make on the OP, or are you just here to complain about the management?

I already made a comment on the OP, and then was responding to other comments that were made towards me with my further comments, so I don’t get what you are on about

. Your first comment here was this:

I do have to agree that the bullying is a bit out of hand Chris. The posters in general aren’t entirely innocent but I would expect the person who posted the blog to hold him or herself up to a higher standard.

You see bullying? I see Chris being extremely tolerant to people such as phht and assorted other trolls, so I don’t get why you felt the need to tell Chris he is doing something wrong..

I do admire your ability to always see people as posting in good faith. I found the two accusations of bullying so close together highly suspicious considering how many socks have been about the blog this week.

Next week spring break will be over, and all the frat boys will be back to their usual routine.

I felt the accusation of being bullied was authentic, and that is what lead me to post the way that I did. I did offer my opinion of the piece, as you can see from the rest of the post that you quoted from. I’m not entirely sure what a sock is, but are you saying that you are suspicious that I could be Phhht? I apologize if I gave that impression. I am not Phhht and do not represent or endorse any argument made by him or her.

In my opinion, Glass should have a pulsing red light when recording video, so as to ensure bystanders notice it. It should also flash twice when taking a still picture, preferably with a mandatory shutter noise as with most phones, for the same reason.

Further, I think the design should be revised to incorporate a physical shutter that covers the lens, which signals to others ‘I am not, and have no intention of, recording video right now’.

Honestly I love the idea of Google Glass. I totally get why people don’t like it, but I do think that it’s inevitable. Eventually (probably not in my lifetime) we will have artificial eyes, and they will be the ultimate expression of this technology.

Personally I’m excited to become a gargoyle, and I would never upload anything without someone’s at least implied permission but I know that A: So many people will ignore all consent when uploading and B: it will be nearly impossible to get consent from everyone in say, an image or video of a busy street in a big city.

This is the infant, larval form of a technology that is going to totally change human interaction and society. Google Glass probably won’t do that, but later versions of the technology that are more subtle and powerful probably will. It’s exciting to see the start of it happening, and I see why people are scared.

Honestly though, there’s really no way to stop it from happening. This is one of those technology revolutions that will force people to adapt or be really unhappy. I think at this early beginning point it is better to try to create what we consider to be good social norms for the use of the technology than to try to shut it down completely. The latter is just not going to happen, it’s not a tide that can be held back forever. The former might create good social structures that can be used to mitigate or prevent abuses of this kind of tech.

So how about we make Google Glass automatically blur or pixelate, in real time, the faces of people who don’t consent to being recorded?

The problem isn’t this one new gadget in isolation. Rather, it’s the interaction between what that thing records with other internet companies, like Facebook, but also with say your bank, or employer. There is so much data going to be available about you that can be correlated with other data, from your cellphone location records to your online purchases to, yes, someone on a bus wearing Google Glass and (even inadvertently) getting you in the frame, that the privacy issues go way beyond what is now being said about Glass.

I would never upload anything without someone’s at least implied permission

Boy oh boy, do I ever see a wealth of problems in that one little sentence. Given how many people already have incredibly serious problems understanding consent right now, the idea of implied consent is overwhelmingly problematic. People already do heinous things under the guise of implied consent, either having no clue as to what consent actually is and means, or deliberately toss that off in order to do what they wish.

Just about every day here, we deal with people who either don’t understand the concept and/or definition of consent, or are very busy demonstrating that they don’t actually give a damn about consent or not.

I absolutely get that. But considering the omni-active nature of this technology, there will be a lot of times when it will be impossible or extremely socially awkward to get direct, unequivocal consent from everyone featured in a video or photo. If I’m on stage at an event, and I snap a picture of the crowd with my smartphone to tweet about how great the crowd is, I’m not going to query every person in the crowd to get individual consent from each of them.

Google glass will be like that every time you record something in a public place with a lot of people. Let’s say I’m recording something with the consent of a particular individual, but I’m also recording the people in the background. Maybe someone in the background does something funny or unexpected and that’s what makes the video go viral.

This is all stuff that can happen with smartphones right now but it’s just more obvious and less pervasive than it will be with Google Glass. I think that this technology will force a change in attitude about how people behave and their expectation of privacy in public. People will eventually just assume that they’re being recorded at all times in public. Hell, if you live in certain cities, that’s already a really good assumption to make. IIRC London and NYC have a LOT of cameras in them.

We’re either going to get less embarrassed or more reserved in public. Or maybe different cultures will go different ways on that one. But either way, the whole notion of privacy is going to take even more of a beating than it already has as the Information Revolution steamrolls on.

consider. warrantless searches, rolling wiretaps, and secret courts who never, ever have to tell you you had a warrant against you. Now add that to maybe a half million or so “google glass” users. The potential for abuse is immense. The difference between “Google Glass” and the current conditions where everybody has a cell phone with a camera in it is, it takes actions on the part of the user to upload cell phone video, and someone shooting video with their phone is relatively obvious, in comparison to someone simply wearing glasses.

privacy and anonymity interesting stuff.
I doubt we will ever see a time when everything is recorded all the time there is no way we can make any use of that much crap even with machine learning I have “faith” in the stupidity and laziness of human beings.

Long ago I read one of the John D McDonald “Travis Mcgee” mysteries in it had a discussion with his friend Meyer the retired investment guy who advised Mcgee if he wanted to be more inconspicuous he should be involved with a moderate amount of things like bank accounts and things because if he had none of the “attachments” he would stand out as an anomaly and rouse further inspection same would go for being into everything too much.

the thing that bothers me the most I guess about this lose of privacy is that it is mostly lost to the marketers and sellers of shit we could possibly live without for a few hours at least

In all seriousness though. I’m not sure I like the idea of computer glasses with cameras. I agree that it’ll probably become unavoidable, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
But then again, I am a young man who uses his phone only for calls and texting (and wishes I could avoid the texting altogether)

I understand the dislike of being recorded without consent, I hate that too, but there’s also a difference between something sticking a camera in your face and someone sitting at a table wearing google glass and just happens to be looking in your general direction. That person might very well not be recording you. But I’ll readily agree that the glasses should an easily visible indicator of recording.

There are other implications about these glasses aswell, with regards to the GPS and traffic. If you’re wearing them while driving, do they distract you from traffic in such a way that they could pose a danger?

Taking up-skirt pics with your googolspecs would be really conspicuous.

And I think you are drastically underestimating the ingenuity of perverts. Working security, I’ve “accidentally” stomped on some very clever devices. How long before someone gets it off the arms, disables the LED, and mounts it in their shoe?

Thank you for this post, Chris.
Bunnies are cute.
I like my privacy, the advance of technology is unavoidable, and I don’t trust things that act automatically (as much as a thing can act), especially when it comes to today’s facial recognition technologies and vast global databases and all the rest.
I think there is such a thing as too much connectedness.

but there’s also a difference between something sticking a camera in your face and someone sitting at a table wearing google glass and just happens to be looking in your general direction. That person might very well not be recording you.

But this is naive. Maybe the person is not recording you, but Google is still saving the incoming data, and they could get correlated with a gazillion other data about you? This is not as simple as a guy wearing Google Glass walking on a nude beach.

If Google Glasses become widespread I predict at least two further advances, first the rapid development and deployment of (posssibly illicit) 3G/4G RF jammers and secondly, in the criminal sphere, the development and deployment of small and effectve EMP units which will fry the processors in the glasses and potentially thermally burn the user

If someone is interested in what the consequences of widespread use of a device such as Google Glass could be, I’d recommend watching the third episode of the first season of “Black Mirror”, a series by Charlie Brooker (the series is great in general, imo). It’s a bit dystopian, but well, I think the very idea of recording everything I’ve done or witnessed wearing my glasses is nothing to look forward to.

And I think it’s not about the possibility to do so. Because technology advances, it’s pretty clear that it will be possible to shrink any recording device to a size where it isn’t recognizable anymore. So it’s just about regulating the technology, which is the usual case for any new technology anyway. Thus, I find arguing along the lines of “It will be possible, so deal with it” a bit moot.

It’s a societal problem of allowing “connected at all times” to be the default. Know what texting in the middle of a conversation is? It’s rude. Know what not turning your phone off during a concert is? It’s rude. Know what talking on the phone in a public bathroom is? GROSS and also rude. We’ve failed as a society to say “yes, being connected via computers is nice, but there are places and times where what is happening in front of you takes priority”.

I totally agree with you – enforcement is a big problem. In privacy-related issues, it is a pretty general problem: Can you be sure that a company that has access to your private data is following privacy regulations? How would you determine your data isn’t sold anyway? Usually, you just can’t.

For example, there was a case in Germany where a grocery store monitored its employees without telling them. The cameras used for this were pretty much invisible, so, yes, enforcement of regulations regarding this was a problem until someone informed the press about this.

And let’s not begin to talk about under what jurisdiction recorded data of your surroundings would fall (and how you enforce that). Or how you delete things from the Internet without having a Streisand effect.

But all this being the case doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any regulations at all.

What is the point of hidden recording, especially for somewhere like a grocery store? If the ultimate goal is to keep employees from doing things they shouldn’t, then the recording should be overt and in-your-face. That would change the behavior to the desired state. Secret recording is only useful if punishment is the ultimate goal.

Irmin, I thought of that episode of “Black Mirror” when I saw this as well!
I don’t think there’s any mileage in suggestions of ways to make the recording mode more obvious. As people have suggested, the LED software switch will be hacked within five nanoseconds of the product release, and adding shutters or other physical impediments will add to production costs and, as with the addition of any moving part, reduce reliability and durability, so the producers simply won’t do it. There will also be, very quickly and inevitably, products with the same functionality and similar or lower prices, but manufactured to look far more like normal glasses.
There is, potentially, one small silver lining: I foresee a reduction in the number of bright LED screens blocking the view of the stage at concerts, and the people recording will be able to watch the stage rather than their phone screens like we used to…

First let me say that I love the idea of acting up in the public sphere if and when being recorded by any recording technology, new or old. If my eating dinner is included in someone’s recording–whether inadvertent or deliberate–then they also should be prepared for the unexpected result. It will make it harder to plan for a dinner out, since I don’t normally carry a Sharpie & posterboard, but what the hell, I can adapt.

Second, the reference to the panopticon is timely. I just read an article (wish I could remember where, online reading tends to blend together for me) that was presented as a new and improved version of tethering for parolees or minimum security “public offenders.” Yes, there’s an app for that. Using smartphones with GPS & a reporting app that requires interaction, the apps authors propose that instead of tethers or incarceration, states/counties could keep tabs on provisionally released offenders by having them keep track of themselves. I know I am reading my own prejudices into this, but the app’s authors (not the article’s) were practically giddy about this new technological panopticon.

Reading this blog about the Google Glass makes me think that the techies need to jump on Google Glass as a newer, better, more capable way of having those deemed “anti-social” report in on themselves. The cost should be no object, since the prison industry has been one of the more reliably consistent growth areas in the American economy. And if there is a lower demand for physical incarceration, it would seem that this industry needs ways to branch out to spend government money. Again, with so much of the philosophy on the right being about making government smaller, it is always surprising to me that they will freely spend on prisons and social control. Google Glass seems designed for this.

The article’s authors, though, made the point that was rattling around in this old head–How about just flat out NOT incarcerating so darn many people in the first place?

While I agree with the post, I fear that the genie is out of the bottle. About five or six years ago I discovered that one of my co-workers had taken a picture of me at a work event, cropped out the body, and pasted the head on top of a dancing elf for her webpage. She thought it was a cute joke, and was shocked at how angry I was. It never even occurred to her that 1) she didn’t have permission to use my image and 2) that once something is up on the internet, there is no sure way to remove it, ever. Threatening legal action was, perhaps, a bit over the top on my part, but I think she got my point.

Alas, there are many, many people (perhaps a majority) who, like my co-worker, have absolutely no idea of the implications of digital photography and filming. Every day brings stories of teenagers who post stupid pictures or criminals who post pictures of illegal activities (or both, in the case of the Stuebenville rape).

The only way to stop the march to the Panopticon is to have a majority of people reject the technology, en masse. But that isn’t going to happen.

To borrow a phrase from Charles Stross, instead of Big Brother we will have millions of Little Brothers.

I was thinking along the lines of birgerjohansson: I can envision a burgeoning industry in personal blocking/fogging devices. Something along the lines of Mandrake the Magician’s ability to cloud minds, only this will render the wearer unintelligible to the Glass. Turn up the gain & it would block all nonemergency cell phone transmission.

Why are people only complaining about this issue now, with the introduction of Google Glass?

The time to complain was long long ago and we missed it. To single out people wearing Google Glass is just odd considering that pretty much everyone now is carrying a camera on them anyway and it can be recording others without them knowing.

Anyway, you can only ask people to stop if you know people are recording. These devices will get smaller to the point that you wont know they are being worn at all.

I was naive about tech in 2000 and 2004. I’m not looking forward to Google Glass and similar things in the future because of the grief I suffered in those 2 years. The first, my personal, free and no money involved website was monitored and used against me to fire me. Next, a friend was using IM sniffers to track my password-hidden writing online. I still don’t know why anyone would want to see writing I did online (which was better, because it was when I started having problems with my now-ex-husband and didn’t want him reading anything on paper I needed to write about him.)

I don’t forsee things being any more pleasant when I show up in people’s filming in places I feel are private.

I’m also paranoid now that just with the little surveillance I was unaware of so long ago, that we must already be living in a Little Brother world, but it’s still kinda secret. Bluetooth is a huge red flag in my world.

When customers can’t put down their phones, or have to have that bluetooth thing in their ear that can camouflage recording devices, already, I am anxious to interact with them. Makes my customer service even worse than usual. (I work 3rd shift to help keep that to a minimum as it is.)

I love technology. I don’t so much love *people* with technology, though. In general.

Google already blurs faces of people in Streetview. And cameras are pretty good at identifying things that look like human faces. So how about we make Google Glass automatically blur or pixelate, in real time, the faces of people who don’t consent to being recorded?

Mmmm… I have tinkered a bit with computer vision algorithms and I somehow doubt a mobile device has enough computing power for face recognition and image treatment in realtime, especially at high resolutions. For Streetview, Google has single pre-recorded frames that it can treat with the huge ressources – warehouse-style computers – at its disposal. The mobile device would have to treat at least 24 frames/s with a ARM Cortex-A9 or similar.

Consent can be indicated by wearing a QR code or broadcasting a special signal of your own. Blurring would be the default for anyone who doesn’t opt in.

And maybe Google Glass can broadcast an ID so that people know who is recording them, and can check the recording if it is posted online.

A simpler and more economical (resource-wise) way would be for those who want to opt out to wear an object as a pendant that is more easily recognized by vision software than a human face (something that looks like a camera calibration target), and simply scramble the area over it, where the face should be.

But for that you’d rely on people not having their own camera handling software, and considering that APIs for these things and computer vision libraries are public domain, it would be no protection at all against a malicious user.

I was thinking along the lines of birgerjohansson: I can envision a burgeoning industry in personal blocking/fogging devices. Something along the lines of Mandrake the Magician’s ability to cloud minds, only this will render the wearer unintelligible to the Glass. Turn up the gain & it would block all nonemergency cell phone transmission.

That would not be very useful. The camera user can still record the images and transmit them later.

There’s no way I can think of to interfere with a camera taking images besides wearing a mask or disabling it completely.

Fear not. I am 6’5 and 300lbs and people on mobile phones cant see me and frequently bounce off.
Once google glass becomes common the people will rise up and all those idiots will be thrown under the nearest vehicle for looking at augmented reality and not the real reality.
As for secret filming – we’re screwed as something that can fit into the frame of your spectacles will easily fit into a badge etc etc.
It may be that we will just have to wait for a while until the fact that there will be a complete glut of everyones ‘nakedness’ that it essentially becomes valueless.
The technolgy is here and theres no getting rid of it – unless we can convince the RIAA thay it will be used for sharing music in which case they’ll try and close the world down.

Whilst much of this discussion has been US-centric I think those of us in Europe have a number of controls over the data collection and storage aspects. If data is collected by the wearer or Google and stored, the storage will come under the European Data Protection Directive and subsequent national laws. It could be argued that the cloud servers must be based in the EU or a guarantee be available that the US government cannot access the data.
Access by European governments would be at risk of breaching section 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (and section 6?).
Further in the UK I would suggest that users of Google Glass could be committing a crime under the Public Order Act(1986) (Specifically sections 4A and 5 which outlaw some forms of Harassment )
Is there a competent legal scholar available to give an opinion?

If I’m ever out your way and run into youin the desert, a cafe, a lecture, or I assume anywhere else, that you happen to be, and I happen to have one of these thingamijiggers, I swear to Bog that I won’t so much as point it in your direction, or like, even wear it. You’ve earned that from me.

Nice ideas. Those would go a long way in making me feel more comfortable.

Thank you.
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baroncognito @108,

So, the solution to not being recorded is getting Google to be able to track your location?

No. Quite the opposite, in fact. It would be the recorder who is tracked, so that when you are recorded by him you will know his name and the ID tag attached to the file he is making. You can then review what he has publicized about you. No one needs to know who you are in order for you to do this.

But they will anyway because you will be recognized, and that data will go into your permanent record and reputation networks.

By the way, it will be interesting to see the cases that crop up when someone is mis-identified in a video by the automated facial-recognition software. How will they defend their reputation when nothing can be deleted, including false information?
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timdiaz @123,

We’re either going to get less embarrassed or more reserved in public.

I think we will ultimately become more reserved here in the U.S., since I don’t see us becoming a less judgmental and less conformist society. In the meantime, some young people will be unembarrassed and have fun with it for a while, until they start to figure out that being seen in the wrong place even once or reading the wrong book even once will cost them friendships, scholarships, and jobs — all because in the past not everything was noticed and not everything was retained.

And then there are the people who do nothing worth being embarrassed about, but are still hounded and harassed because some small number of people have a personal vendetta against them. Will they have to simply remain homebound? It will be interesting to see how society deals with those cases.

I keep wondering how people are going to deal with things like Glass once they start getting used as medical devices. For example, people with traumatic brain injuries that cause issues with things like memory or prosopagnosia (a brain disorder that causes people to be unable to recognize the faces of others) could surely be prescribed things like Glass to assist them in their day to day activities. This comes to mind because I have both a bad memory and difficulty in maintaining memory of people’s faces even though I don’t have a disorder. I wonder how much more difficult for those who actually have a medical condition that makes their problems even worse.

That isn’t to say that Glass doesn’t make me nervous. It does. To anyone who says, “Well, if you’ve got nothing to hide, then why does it bother you?” I want to scream, “Haven’t you ever had anything embarrassing happen to you in public that wasn’t wrong or illegal, like have your skirt blown up by the wind? Would you be happy if those ended up on the internet for everyone to see?”

“I’m sorry Mr. Smith, after seeing that prank you pulled when you were seventeen we decided not to hire you. I know you’re more mature now at 45 but we have to be careful about the kind of people we hire. No, there aren’t any videos of us when we were young, they have been removed due to reasons of national security.”

Any technological fix that resides in the Googleglass themselves is a nonstarter: it’ll be hacked within days, if not hours of release. There are way more bored, brilliant, mischevious 16-year-olds than there are engineers on Google’s payroll, and there always will be.

A tech fix is going to have to be under the control of potential targets. Like in Doctorow’s Pirate Cinema, a micro-laser personal bugzapper hat modified to target camera lenses instead of mosquitos and blind them. Which has the added benefit of making everyone look like dorky Australians, just for the lulz.

You’ve nailed it for me. I’m not worried about the technology (per se), I’m worried about the increasing number and degree of ways the individual is required to justify themselves to corporations and/or the state, rather than the reverse. Good little big-as-it-needs-to-be government socialist that I am, I think govt should be falling over itself to justify itself and its actions to us citizens, not the other way around. The same goes for corporations only more so. The power imbalance, for me, dictates that it should be so. Yes, yes, I’ll keep dreaming.

Google Glass etc will just be another tool used to justify ourselves to those in various forms of power somehow. How precisely? No (concrete) idea. But every other technological advance has been so used. As more information about individuals is collectable, more has been collected.

Lots of people won’t care what they’re filmed doing via Google Glass. You just have to look at a show like Cops, where people seem all to ready to sign a release letting themselves be seen in problematic circumstances.

I have tinkered a bit with computer vision algorithms and I somehow doubt a mobile device has enough computing power for face recognition and image treatment in realtime, especially at high resolutions.

You’ve tinkered with these algorithms and you’ve never encountered cloud or remote computing? The device doesn’t have to have much, if any, computing power of it’s own. Even now, MMORPGs practically only do the graphics processing locally. So much of the computing happens out there.

It’s not only possible for real-time face-recognition to be incorporated into such a device as Google’s, but it’s already available on Facebook as accessed through smart phones. (A, thankfully, illegal technology for Facebook to implement in Canada.)

So, yeah, that’s a definite concern.
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I’m liking the ideas of people being able to broadcast their consent automatically but, even then, there’s too much room for circumvention and abuse (obviously, I hope). There’s also the problem with standards; is someone going to have to broadcast a bunch of different signals for each proprietary technology given the likely lack of government oversight or of a standards and regulatory body (there is a notable lack of such interventions in a multitude of technologies presently worldwide)? There are people, myself included, who already aren’t on Facebook exactly because they don’t want to spend any time at all clicking, sliding and affirming a multitude of privacy settings for various categories of interaction.

It also miffs me a bit that any given person has to broadcast their consent to an implied request. That seems like a backwards approach. I’ll grant that it may be a necessary solution, but it just seems that someone should have to, you know, actually ask to record someone.

No. At least, I’m not. I’m sure all of that is very true. It’s largely true of Canada as well. However, consider the possibility that it wouldn’t matter what laws are in place.

It’s truly naïve to think that hacks won’t be both easy and commonplace or that a government will ultimately have control over private servers and the like. I mean, really, it’s not even hypothetical right now. The current laws, anywhere, are just so much decoration. If they make you feel safe, they’re serving, essentially, their only plausible purpose. I see no real way that a law, unless it is incredibly invasive and a government takes full control, could possibly intervene in the capacity to record and upload of any given device, even those extant and in use presently. And, besides, it’s already the case that no law and certainly no government (no matter how invasive and controlling) can be successful, even if individuals are in direct contravence of a given law.

If there is going to be a magic consent broadcaster, will it be expensive?

I don’t see that it should be. It could be a qr code, as suggested (which you could generate yourself instantly, even now), or an ir device loaded with consent info or something else.

But it’s a seriously hypothetical thing anyway. I can’t actually believe that such a thing would even be implemented. The problem is, I’m not sure enough people actually care that much about the consent of others. Which, I suppose, is exactly why such a hypothetical could even be considered. Which in concern, is cause for extreme pessimism.

The point rr brought up in #157 made me think a bit. I’ve generally been going along the lines of, “well once everything everybody’s ever done will now be accessible, no one will care”, but now I’m thinking that some assholes will use the information to shut out people they already want to shut out – for the people they like, they will somehow manage to not know the information is there.

Also, I won’t be buying google glasses if they don’t come with an earpiece that makes the appropriate beep/boop/whir/click sounds that I’ve come to expect from futuristic hightech shit that I see on television and movies.

And that allows me to eavesdrop on your conversations, or say, be fluent in over six million forms of communication including the binary language of moisture evaporators.

Again to clarify, my idea of broadcasting consent is a device (or image-badge) that only says, “Yes, film me.” Not having this means “no”, by default. Most people in view of the device would be blurred because they are not granting permission.

I’m not going to arrange it so I have to buy something that broadcasts a “no”. That would be a ridiculous burden, especially on the poor, on children, on the non-tech-savvy, and on people who forget to charge batteries every day. “No” has to be the default assumption without any special requirements, just like normal.

As for proprietary limitations, consider this: If my “please film me” signal only works with Google products and not Nokia products, Glass-wearers can see what I look like, but Nokia users see blur. That’s just fine. If these companies want to create a common standard, they can cooperate.

Ideally, people who wear these kinds of omni-recording devices would only be unblurred to other users of same. They can police each other’s minute public foibles, and leave the rest of the world out of it.

If these companies want to create a common standard, they can cooperate.

Hehehe.

Okay, so the default would be ‘blur me’. That’s fine. Does the government establish and enforce this default? Can users by-pass it? Are corporations nice enough to implement it on their own? Do enough people care enough to ask for it to be implemented?

I think it’s a good idea (even if I got the default assumption wrong), but there’s still problems.

Honestly I love the idea of Google Glass. I totally get why people don’t like it, but I do think that it’s inevitable. Eventually (probably not in my lifetime) we will have artificial eyes, and they will be the ultimate expression of this technology.

The ultimate opt-in face blocking method would be the tape from the Ringu/The Ring movies. Unfortunately, the licensing period is just seven days, license renewal is pretty much a pyramid scheme, and opting out is pretty brutal.

Yeah, I’ve thought about this issue and I certainly understand the creep-out factor. But, on balance, I think I’ve come to the pro-record side, with caveats. First, I think it’s probably inevitable. Also, growing up in a town of 4000 residents was a lot like having 4000 cameras watching me all the time. NO naughty behavior could be attempted in public without a high chance of the parental units hearing about it.

Chris, of course, has the right to control recording of his lectures since that is copyrighted material being given to a select audience. And I think it will have to become a social convention (or even a legal requirement) to turn off recording devices when you enter any home or other non-public venue. However, if I choose to sit at a sidewalk cafe in full view of everyone who is on the public street, I would think that that amounts to tacit permission to observe me and even record me. If I get drunk and act like a jerk in public, I deserve to be embarrassed on the internet. If I try to take upskirt shots, I deserve to be recorded myself and reported to the authorities. On the whole, I think an accurate record of everyone’s behavior will tend to enforce better social interactions.

facebook has already created a culture where people think they own the bodies of (female) teachers. Saying this won’t be used by businesses to turn workers into serfs, forced to obey the Boss even after hours is naive. And it’s a real threat to labor.

The corporate world has been colonizing more and more of the private life and exerting more and more control on workers. People’s potential anger to being recorded is justified

To me the deep problem with our view and use of such technologies is that we end up treating people as objects rather than as sentient beings with interests. Those who are sniping at people complaining about privacy are operating under a grim and offensive unspoken assumption: that other people—their bodies, their images, their activities—are objects and set decoration fit for use in the Glass wearer’s personal game or set piece. It’s a reversal of what ought to be the default assumption: that people are people and their needs and consent trumps someone else’s desire to treat them as commodities.

We do not have to concede to this unspoken regime that we’ve “opted in” to being used (no matter how mild or inoffensive you think that use may be, that’s irrelevant) by other people through technology. That is extremely offensive. It’s. . . rude isn’t a strong enough word but it’s along those lines.

And this has nothing to do with technophobia. It is not a new problem, it has ever been a concern for human beings at all stages of technological development. The same conversation was taking place with the introduction of the telephone, which many saw as an outrageous intrusion into the private sphere. And they weren’t wrong—the idea that a ringing device, a proxy for the caller, had a right to be answered and had the ability to demand one’s attention at any hour of the day or night is astonishing when you think about it.

We’re beginning to remember that we’re not, in fact, so obligated, though we acted as if we were for a century. Notice how the act of phoning someone (or leaving them voicemail) is no longer the socially acceptable default mode of communication. It’s not verboten, but it’s less and less preferred compared to less intrusive means such as texting. I first objected strenuously to texting, seeing it as yet one more thing I was Automatically Obligated to Do Because Technology. But I quickly changed my mind when I realized how many unnecessary and unwanted phone conversations I didn’t have to have! People are beginning to sound almost Victorian in their attitudes toward voice phone and voicemail—we’ve woken up to the idea that we don’t have to be in a perpetual state of “yes” with phones anymore.

Technologies such as Google Glass and users who petulantly whine that anyone would object to their universal use assume we’re in this state of perpetual consent. It insults and offends because, once again, it allows users to treat other people as inert matter to be arranged at will for the disport of the tech user.

There’s also the bit about how the world is divided into two classes:
(1) Those who have no problem being constantly exposed, because this exposure does not hurt them, and
(2) Those who have a problem being constantly exposed, because this exposure could hurt them in some circumstances.

As it happens, the people in set (1) tend to be those who already have social power and money.

Remember when Google introduced one of their online-integration gizmos that had the effect of telling everyone who was in your email address book where you were in meatspace?

To Google’s mind (made up mostly of people in the the first class), this was nifty.

To people in the second class, this was terrifying. The example of a person hiding from an abusive ex (who would be in their address book, because of a history of communication between them) was made. That person would be in physical danger if their ex knew exactly where they were.

Or, to put it another way: there are people who don’t get why privacy is important, because a lack of privacy wouldn’t hurt them, either because there’s no one who would use that lack of privacy against them, or because anyone who would want to would suffer severe consequences (*cough cough*). There are also people for whom a lack of privacy is dangerous, and who would suffer harm without it.

Or, to put it another way: there are people who don’t get why privacy is important, because a lack of privacy wouldn’t hurt them, either because there’s no one who would use that lack of privacy against them, or because anyone who would want to would suffer severe consequences (*cough cough*). There are also people for whom a lack of privacy is dangerous, and who would suffer harm without it.

Treading carefully to avoid breaking Chris’ “Do Not Talk About Fight Club” rule in the OP, but how much of the hoopla over public shaming is rage that – for once – class (1) and (2) are merging, and that advances in technology make this merging easier?

The issue with Glass – as Chris said – is as much the price tag as anything. Technology makes class merging easy when everyone has access to it. Until that time, it is used by class (1) to impose their view of the world. It is only when everyone has access to whatever gadget that the concerns of class (2) are heard, because then everyone realizes that they ARE in class (2).

Dave, ex-Kwisatz Haderach @ #128: Yeah, most people don’t seem to get how very good most of these creeps are at what they do. The times I’ve seen creepshotters in action, I only know because of my previous involvement with one. Most people don’t know.

Doug Hudson @ #42: Well, lots of us have been talking about the harms of creepshots for years as well. Admittedly, there was the introduction of the “shutter” noise when a camera phone is in use.

Turtles @ #145: Well, some of us have been talking about this for some times, but y’know being seen as hysterical ladiez and freeze peach and how dare we kink-shame and implied consent because we’re in public.

Scr…Archivist: Though the blurring idea wouldn’t be perfect, perfect is impossible, and that would help a lot, I think.

Eristae @ #156: That is a really good point. I can think of a lot of really good, really helpful uses for tech like that. But still, the other stuff. damn terrible people, ruining everything for the rest of us.

rr @ #157: That is also a worry of mine with things like this.

Relatedly, Ing @ #184: Exactly! This will definitely benefit the ruling classes disproportionately. And it will be abused. We can predict this based on how much people are doing it already with the tech we have now.

Josh @ #188: That comment is good and you should feel good.

Admittedly, my first thoughts with regard to googlegoggles is about the fact that creepshot enthusiasts are likely really, really happy. And that this is going to create a constant, triggering hell for people who do have trigger issues related to being filmed (a depressing number of sexual assault survivors do). So I suppose, what I’m saying is people like me will enjoy a glorious future of burkas or never leaving their houses. Freeze peach.

I can see a lot of theoretical benefits to the devices, for medical uses and also for things like filming police brutality, which is a very dangerous but vital act these days. But the abuses will occur the other way more.

Also, people who use their cells while eating dinner, in public bathrooms, and who text while talking to others are assholes.

And, yes, if you’re seeing connections between the disregard for other people’s privacy as it stacks up against your desire to use them, the idea that anyone who isn’t loudly and brazenly saying “no” at all times is by default consenting, and the type of people who defend misogyny and rape culture by declaring that it doesn’t exist and one is unreasonable to expect them to ask first. . .

The way our society is constructed right now, there are people who have a ton to lose from a loss of privacy. But the original blog post at the top of this page puts the person with that attitude outside of the conversation on how Google Glass will be used by simply insisting “not near me”. It is inevitable that Glass, or a similar technology will be used near Chris and near tons of other people who dislike that technology because they fall somewhere in a spectrum between personal dislike and very justified fear.

I think it is more useful to say, “Okay, there is going to be a technology called Google Glass that can record everything, everywhere, all the time, invisibly. Granting that, how should we deal with it?”

We already have laws for special circumstances attached to crimes. For instance, killing someone because I hate their race/gender/religion/etc is worse than doing it because I wanted their wallet. Society recognizes that a person who commits a hate crime is gunning for an entire class of citizens and there need to be harsher punishments to both remove those individuals from the citizens they would harm, and also hopefully discourage people from committing that type of crime.

We have laws on the books that punish violation of privacy. If I lurk outside your home and peer into your windows, that’s a criminal act. If I do it with Google Glass on, uploading a video of you doing laundry in your underwear, it should be the same class of criminal act but with much more stiff penalties.

We’ll need some new legal definitions as well. Laws that recognize that the subject of a video taken in public might be entitled to some compensation if a randomly taken video in public gets 50 million Youtube hits and makes the Glass user a bunch of cash. Legal definitions that separate the subject of a video from background players because there is a very real difference in the situation of merely having been in the background of a video that went viral and being the reason it went viral.

I’m imagining it as being a sort of combination of our current eavesdropping / recording laws and our laws about slander/libel. In other words, if you can show that a video or picture taken with a recording device harmed you in some legally recognized way, then you will be entitled to compensation, damages, etc, and the person responsible for sharing the media in question may face civil penalties like fines and jail time.

The point has been made that the cameras are going to become invisible. We can’t stop people from using this technology on the recording end. However, we can mediate the use of the technology on the sharing/distribution end. There’s no way to catch someone who shares something behind 16 layers of proxies and VPNs. But that won’t even be 1/10th of 1 percent of the users. The vast, vast majority of users will share it directly to their facebook account or g+ account or whatever. So it will be tied to the identity of the sharer and in my view, that’s where we really need to introduce the mediation, and have a conversation about how this sharing should be done.

The recording is going to happen, but we can still talk about how that media gets used after it is recorded.

I regularly record my bicycle commutes, mainly on the off chance that my frequent near misses with the stupid cagers around here turn into an actual impact.

However, I delete them every day (I know some people who archive their footage). I don’t currently have an HD camera, so I’d probably be out of luck getting a license plate in a hit and run situation.

I would not mind having something like this in a mountable camera (as opposed to glasses), but I want the ability to delete them, and actually make sure they’re gone. I don’t know that once some thing is on ‘the cloud’, it isn’t there forever in some way.

Thanks for that post, Josh. It’s hard for me to express just how bothered I am about things like “implied” or “tacit” consent, which ties into “hey, everyone else is just an object for my amusement!” / “hey, we could get money from a clip show with this!” / “There’s Sheila, I hate her, so…”

I’m one of those people who get to live every day with PTSD and other little difficulties. When I’m out and about because I have to be, I’m not giving anyone consent to decide that I’ll be the object of their amusement/greed/spite/whatever else.

We have laws on the books that punish violation of privacy. If I lurk outside your home and peer into your windows, that’s a criminal act.

Not if you’re standing on the sidewalk. That’s perfectly legal. You might want to check into current state by state stalking laws. A majority of them are abysmal. In states where the laws are better, that’s generally the result of people being murdered, as there was no legal recourse prior. The burden of evidence is one the victim in such cases, they have to amass evidence. Privacy laws aren’t cracked up to what you think.

If someone is on your property peeping into a window, and they run, then what? You didn’t get a good look, you don’t know them, they were gone before the cops got there, you didn’t have your house bristling with timer lights and cameras, so…

For the usual value of “NIMBY,” which generally means “people who don’t have to deal with the consequences of their acts are making decisions that will affect a person, habitat or locality, and refusing to ground-truth their abstract assumptions by admitting actual data into evidence”? Absolutely.

I should note that I do think privacy concerns around technologies like Google Glass are legitimate issue. But also think, as I apparently failed to make clear with my previous comment, that convincing much of the public there are issues at all, is going to be a hard process when so many people will do just about anything to get in the public eye. If you’re willing to let yourself be shown on national TV being hauled off by the cops for theft or what have you, you’re likely not going to care if someone with those fancy glasses puts your face online.

The “speaking label” thing is interesting – many drugs have similar names, and if someone could pick up a bottle and not just see the similar labels but (for example) “THIS DRUG IS A VASODILATOR” and “THIS DRUG IS AN ANTIDEPRESSANT” pop up, that would be very useful at preventing the sort of tragedies that result when someone takes the wrong drug.

“” some young people will be unembarrassed and have fun with it for a while, until they start to figure out that being seen in the wrong place even once or reading the wrong book even once will cost them friendships, scholarships, and jobs — all because in the past not everything was noticed and not everything was retained.”

maybe but it might work in an opposite way by finally making most of the behavior that is judged as problematic, innocent because it is also very common and therefor meaning less and pointless.
The problem now is those who are so judgmental and quick to use any differences as a negative use it that way.
That you were caught smoking a joint judged by your peers who may have also done so and may have also been caught is now meaningless for purposes of discrimination. You were seen in the company of “undesirables” is also rendered less valuable when those who fit into such a category becomes increasingly smaller.
The problem seems to me to be how the intolerant and controlling use information to “punish” now.
The pranks and revealing self posted pics are only a problem where they are used or can be used to cause negative discrimination.
A picture of you kissing your same sex lover in public is only a problem where having a same sex lover is judged as wrong or your other lover does not know otherwise so what.
interrupting your diner out with an add for the coming attractions in your area is something else again.

if someone watches is less a problem if at the same time they leave you completely alone. Privacy is going to be a problem anyway with just the effects of the number of people and the density. The easier way to help to reduce the stress of that would be an increase in tolerance and mutual respect. I doubt that more controlling laws will be very effective. Though what constitutes an invasion of privacy may be changed and hidden voyeurs may find themselves in much more trouble as it will be much easier to be tracked.

Well, Chris, I think I’ve bounced between about 6 different points of view on this issue (From “Fucking Luddites” to “Fucking stalkers” to “Fucking reality TV”) but I think I come down on the side of TimDiaz @200: This technology is already semi-ubiquitous in phones, and our legislation needs to be updated to match the growing amount of recording going on. I concur with the concept of ‘default NON-consent’ for photography and video would be a boon. The other item is the whole “EVERYTHING I RECORD IS UPLOADED TO THE CLOUD” which is pretty much a non-sell for me. Make the damn thing a visual HUD for my smartphone and I’m sold at under $400 if it includes retina control. But yes, a full revision of stalking/media permissions/personal privacy law to accommodate the changing landscape of media and socialization is necessary. I admit, that I also come from the desert (well, High Steppe, technically, but close enough. Sagebrush counts as cactus, right?) and the only reason I’m really inoculated to recording was spending a tour in the military on O’ahu. Tourists goddamn everywhere. Even then, if I thought I could convince congress to make a personal privacy constitutional amendment, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s a right that’s ignored far too often.

The other item is giving a firm swat to DARPA and the like for things like the ARGUS equipped domestic surveillance drones: (Engadget.com). I’m fairly certain at this point the panopticism of our government won’t be stopping anytime soon. PATRIOT and a few other bits of legislation means that anything you put on the internet is essentially usable by the government. Pandora’s box was opened and there wasn’t shit at the bottom, folks.

ok, I’m going to risk bunnification but I think Chris’s embargo has created an elephant in the room and I’m going to talk about it.

How do we square this idea that there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” when out in public, or the idea that people have a right not to be recorded with out their consent with what Richards did, which was to take a photo, without consent, and post it to the internet?

Seems to me we’re trying to have our cake and eat it too here. Either publicly calling out poor behavior is acceptable, including using technology to do so, or it is not.

Does anyone think that people behaving poorly in public are going to consent to having that poor behavior being recorded and uploaded?

I can’t wrap my head around inisting on consent while simultaneously approving the outing of socially repugnant behavior. If the argument becomes “It depends on context”, i.e. what the bahavior is, then where does the line get drawn and who gets to draw that line?

It’s ok to tweet photos of douchebro’s making dick jokes but it’s not ok to say upload a video of Chris chewing with his mouth open at a cafe? I use extreme examples intentionally. I intuitively know the difference between these two scenarios.

Chances are, benign and ordinary behavior isn’t going to get uploaded and tagged for future research, it’s only the abhorrent behavior that will be, so are we drawing the line at only the behavior that “we” find abhorrent? Who the hell is “we”?

On reality TV, youtube and the internet in general we’re inundated with images of other people’s public behavior being outed and the question of whether those people provided their consent or not is rarely asked. No one asked if the punks bullying the bus lady, or the kitty dumpster lady, or the “she’s so dead” kid from Steubenville or a gazillion other asshats gave their consent to be filmed and have that footage uploaded for millions of people to to point at in disgust, and that’s probably because their behavior is so abhorrent we don’t care.

In the Richards case we see what happens when a sizeable group of people think the behavior isn’t that bad, isn’t so abhorrent, so we should care about the subjects’ agency and willingness to be outed. Many here were shocked that anyone would care about the method used to out them, but that’s because “we” find their behavior abhorrent.

Personally, I think the genie is out of the bottle and there is no longer a “reasonable expectation of privacy” once you go out in public. For better or for worse, when we’re in public we have to consider the fact that our words and actions have the potential to be viewed by millions in perpetuity, so the concept of consent with regard to the publication of our public behavior is moot.

erikthebassist, you have some thoughtful observations there which you clearly made in good faith. As a result, I’m leaving the comment up.

But the reason I made that “Adr*a R*ch*rds is off-topic” condition up top wasn’t because I didn’t think people would have valuable things to say about it, but because we’ve just had an influx of people stirring up shit for weeks. It’s worn on people here, caused some good folks to leave, and generally ruined a number of people’s days from the sheer ass-hattery.

You (generic you) can drop a comment and bat at any resulting shithead trolls and then leave. I have to clean up the mess.

There are shit-tons of other examples of people that could be referenced to play “devil’s advocate.” Hollaback, for instance. Or the Romney “47%” video. None of which would have been necessarily the flame to attract the shit-moths that the PyCon events may well still be.

So now I’m stuck with the “do I delete erikthebassist’s comment in which he specifically decided my stated boundaries weren’t worth respecting and thus make myself look (even more) like an asshole, or do I let it stay and risk losing my fucking weekend to unpaid involuntary labor deleting the bleats of the trolls who will likely show up to make this just another thread about the events at PyCon?

I like the idea of aggressively controlling distribution of anything filmed/photographed in public. Maybe exhorbitantly high fines, with the burden of proof being that consent was obtained rather than that it wasn’t. Not that I trust the justice system to do that in any decent way.

But erikthebassist’s point is a good one as well. Doing so could inadvertently restrict what, in many cases, is the only way to bring certain problems to light – nobody in power believed that cops could be beating people up for no reason other than their race until it was recorded, for instance. Maybe an out clause that if it was in the service of reporting a crime or violation of stated TOS, it would be exempt. But talk about a bureaucratic nightmare.

Indeed. Especially the Russians. I think arbor’s beef is more with the distraction factor, however. I’d love to have a HUD for my bike that just had speed, hill grade, temp, and a GPS. Would be nice. Or I could spend the same amount and get a recumbent, and just mount my phone on it… ( AND not have a sore neck and back!)

erikthebassist: I’m not really a con person, but I have been hankering for a beef on weck for some time so that might do it. Also I have siblings and parents and friends and such in town that I haven’t seen for more than a decade. (Lived there from 1967 to 1982, haven’t been back since 1999.)

One social outcome I can imagine for this new tool is a kind of stalemate. Call it “mutually-assured exposure”. You record me, so I record you. If you use the video of me in a harassment campaign, I publicly identify you. There goes your anonymity, and your YouTube channel (and your monetization of my misfortunes). It’s like what Esteleth was saying above (@190) about how everyone ends up in class 2.

Imagine if people took pictures of the “Muslim patrollers” of London. Then matched them with Facebook pictures, driver’s license pictures, or school ID’s. Consistently. Maybe the harassment wouldn’t completely end, but it would change the stakes.

Carlie I think that only the most naive of the authorities did not know that the cops regularly abused some selected subset of society. as did everyone else it’s just much harder to deny in court with evidence now often supplied by the police themselves besides witnesses with cameras near by.
uncle frogy

I’m legally blind. The idea of being able to wear a pair of glasses that can read signs, labels, barcodes etc, making it possible to identify products in a store without assistance.

Real time color processing and zoom would be wonderful to have on hand, too. I could go watch someone give a talk, and when they inevitably don’t explain their slides, I can zoom in, invert the colors to be white on black and potentially be able to see what I’m supposed to see.

So many possibilities. The privacy concerns are real and scary, but damn I could see how these things could make my life suck a whole lot less.

They don’t seem to realize they have to sell the benefits of the gizmo to the nonuser. If too many venues ban them or people see them as a sign of hostility and treat users beligerqntly it’ll kill the gizmos utility.

If a blinking light isn’t enough perhaps they should take the camera off for now? I mean the camera features are really cool, but Google is going to have a big shit show on their hand if this thread is any indication.

That only works if the exposure is equal. We live in a culture where it is more stigmatizing for a woman to take money from a man for sex, than for a man to pay a woman for sex. There’s a lot more potential embarrassment in “s/he was seen walking into a brothel” than “s/he was seen standing outside a brothel taking pictures of the people who went in.” Who is at risk: the small-town teenager known to have gotten an abortion, or the small-town adult known to have told everyone at their church that a specific teenager had an abortion?

I’m smart enough to know that the largest, most successful tech company in the world pays a lot of really smart people to think about the implications of their own technology, smart enough to know that they probably have thought about every thing we’re discussing in this thread and probably have an army of lawyers who already know the minutiae of the law regarding privacy issues, country by country, state by state, province by province.

Kinda like they already lobbied two state governments to make self driving cars legal.

At the moment they are expensive and limited techtoys for rich kids. In 5-10 years time, they will have swallowed your smartphone, kindle, tablet, laptop, television and computer monitor, mouse and keyboard, the same way smartphones swallowed your point-and-shoot camera, your mp3 player and your PDA.

They will be ubiquitous and indistinguishable from normal eyeglasses.

All data will be stored in the cloud, but won’t, necessarily, be viewable by anyone. Everyone will have their own cloud resource which they will lease similar to the way we pay an ISP for internet access currently. This will be encrypted and keyed to each individual personally. The only information which will be publicly available will be that which we choose to share through facebook, google+, etc.

Or at least this is the starry-eyed daydream that I imagine the google-geeks are having right now, the ultimate end-run around apples oh-so-shiny hardware. (Though I’m sure there will be iglasses as well. I wonder if iglass users will even be able to see non-iglass users?)

Thinking through the implications,… these things will change the world!